We had a smooth run on the way back but traffic on the opposite direction was moving at a snails pace.

We spend a few days in Sydney at Kim’s place, joining Kim’s boot (booze?) camp. Lexy, Megan and I where planning to go to the CBD on New Years Eve to watch the fireworks. I wanted to click pictures but by 31^st afternoon most vantage points where full. As we left the house we decided to not go to the CBD, instead we gate crashed a friends party, had dinner at a restaurant and spent the night talking and drinking wine out of the bottle!

Today I went to the bike shop to buy myself a new helmet. Spoke to the sale person for a while and as I was paying for the helmet, he asked, if I was South African! People beside me thought I was South African too! This is not the first time this has happened. Once before someone thought I was South African; one thought I was a New Zealand Maori(One of the native of New Zealand) and one of them thought I was Irish (Although she only heard me over the phone)! None of the people I have asked to guess got it right. I think of myself as very Indian though. Anyway after the bike shop I went to a super market and asked a sales women where I could find cable ties and she pointed me to Canberra Times I could not stop laughing.

It has almost been two weeks since we moved into our rented house in Canberra. Megan and I have been both sick since then The dogs are not allowed in the house so they have to brave the Canberra cold in the shed Took the day of yesterday and made a few phone calls to change our address and also applied for naked ADSL2 from iinet. No TV and no internet and feels like there is not much to do at home.

Tonight, Megan and I are going to my companies staff dinner! Looking forward to the free three course meal and drinks! Wish we where both not sick.

I have read a lot of discussions on the net for and against image manipulation. This month I heard it too!

What is it with photographers that it is so concerning about the image being manipulated? It seems like badge of honor to claim their image is not modified! A sense of being unique!

I am not sure if an image manipulated or not bothers me. I either like the image or not.

In a way it is like selling organic food and labeling it as organic, else no one would pay more for it! So to show the worth of you image you have to label it as not manipulated.

This is what I had to say to a friend who would not listen to popular music because everyone else was listening to it, hence it was boring, “In search of being unique, we end up being similar”.

It is how Harley Davidson sells a lot of bike. They sell an image of the bike rather than the bike. They sell this “image” to people who go in search of being different and unique not realizing that there are a lot looking for the same “image”.

It seems like photographer are struggling with the same idea of being unique. There is probably a distinction between manipulated and enhanced.

If I had to claim a “unique” style as a photographer, it would be that I don’t use Photoshop much because my Photoshop skills suck! Now that is unique or is it?

This month at the Canberra Photographic Society we had a competition night on the first week and a presentation by Scott Leggo on the second week.

Both sessions where very interesting night and credit to those who put in their time to organize these sessions.

The competition night had some amazing images. Ones I found the most interesting where:

• Series of images from India. (A group of members had travelled to Rajasthan, India)
• Series of images from Singapore during Thaipusam
• Series of portraits in large prints tightly cropped
• Series of portraits from the day Kevin Rudd said sorry to the aboriginals on behalf of the country
• Series of images of gravestones.

The judge finished his critique quite early and for the first time contestants where allowed to talk about their images. Probably not the best idea, as it gives the contestants a chance to disagree with the judge in their presence. It kind of becomes like the crowd judging the judge! There was a bit of discussion on the use of Photoshop to enhance images.

The competition was deservedly won by Russell who took the sorry day portraits.

The second week was a presentation by self taught landscape photographer Scott Leggo, showing us some of his work and his approach to landscape photography. A lot of his images where form North East Victoria. He almost went through his full workflow of how he prepares for an image to the final print. End of session was open to questions. I could sense it and turned out to be true, we ended up spending some time discussing Photoshop again

Scott’s message was that people buy images because they emotionally connect to the image. They want to feel the image. Another interesting idea I interpreted was that, the more people take their digital cameras around and click picture, the more they understand how valuable a professional’s work is.

Common theme to both weeks: Boring discussion about Photoshop and how images with emotion attached, win!

Had my first lesson of Chinese last night for 2 hours! Seven more sessions to go. Our cute teacher Tilly Tan started of teaching us Chinese characters and for a second I thought I was in the wrong class. We soon let her know that we where only interested in speaking and could not be bothered learning Chinese characters.

It was interesting that four out of five students where learning Chinese because their partners are Chinese. Made me wonder if Chinese ever learn other languages! Anyway my reason is no different.

We learned five sentences and numbers from 1 to 10.

The skill level in the class was varied. Some already knew basic pronunciation. I found it really hard to just listen and pronounce rather that look at the persons face and see how they are pronouncing it. I think I will ask Megan help me with that.

Now I’ve got to find someone to speak Chinese with and practice.

Once I am done learning Chinese, I will know four languages: English, Hindi, Tamil and Chinese!

I went to the Autumn Balloon Spectacular this morning. I did not want to miss the start when the balloons are inflated so I went early, but when I reached at 6AM, there where only few security guards getting ready for the day. Found the best free park though! Had a big breakfast and weighted for the balloons to arrive. One by one four wheel drives pulled up with balloons on the trailer. They use a hot air fan to inflate it first and then turn the flame on. The flame is bloody loud when it is on!

As I was walking out of the door this morning, a delivery van pulled up to deliver my HTC Touch Cruise I’ve been waiting for! Opened the package at home to give Samy, Anni and myself a quick look at the shiny new phone.

I had initially wanted to get this one for Megan, as she would probably get more use of it than I would.

Brought it to work with me, unpacked it and turned it on. Looks great! Put the screen protector on first, worried that I might scratch it. The unit is from Taiwan (Supplied for the Taiwan market) as it was supplied with a converter for the charger plug. I was disappointed at first, but then thought to myself that most electronics I have are from Taiwan (Two ASUS laptops, Canon 400D, HTC Touch Cruise now ) and have the to use the convertor.

I will post some pictures when I get a chance.

Last weekend we had to wind our clocks back an hour for the finish of daylight saving. I thought I had set the right time on all the clocks I used, but I had forgotten to change the one in the car. On Tuesday, I was getting ready to attend the CBS weekly meeting and amazingly I only looked at the car clock and never bothered to  look at my wrist watch or my phone clock. I ended up an hour early. Anyway, I spend the next 45 minutes speaking to Bill Tully who presents a few shows on community radio 2XX. We discussed almost everything in that hour from politics, poverty, history, Hitler’s games, British empire to classical music money in sports!

No, it is not a post about tips for wedding photography. It is about this weeks CPS (Canberra Photographic Society) presentation. There where two presentation and I forget the presenter’s names but I learned about the amount of work that goes into post production to produce the end result as a wedding album. Both presenters first showed the pictures they had clicked during the wedding. Although the pictures where good they where not something that caught my attention, but I was amazed how the pictures where used in the wedding album. Proves a point that wedding photography or for that matter any professional photographic result is not achieved by just clicking pictures, but the amount of work that goes into all the steps in the workflow from creating the image to the final output.